


Remnants of a Dream

by walking_through_autumn



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Dreams, Gen, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-09-22
Updated: 2016-02-11
Packaged: 2017-12-27 07:52:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,771
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/976297
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/walking_through_autumn/pseuds/walking_through_autumn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is a world where the dreams people remember take the form of crystals. A world where crystals can be traded for other dreams, or destroyed for imagination energy. A world where, with the right tools, one can harness excess imagination energy to create dreams and fantasies people want to see. Levi partakes in the business of creating and selling dreams - and for all thirty years of his life he hadn't dreamt even once. </p><p>He hadn't thought he would open his eyes to a vast field of emptiness and meet a boy who calls himself a Dreamwalker.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue: The Dreamwalker

Prologue: The Dreamwalker

The last thing he expects when he dozes off to sleep one night is to dive head-first into a dream, for the first time in thirty years of his life.

This is what Levi is aware of.

He remembers drifting off, the world going pleasantly fuzzy around the edges, and the silent darkness welcoming him. He remembers waking up where he shouldn’t, in a world that’s misty and white, standing with bare feet in the soft cotton shirt and pants he went to sleep in. He remembers thinking, very clearly, _what the fuck_? And then being all too aware that he’s not awake in his world, but conscious and able to control his thoughts and movements in a dreamscape.

As he looks around, trying to peer through the mist, he wonders if this is what people see when they dream without crystals. In the distance there’s a faint gathering of light, red and orange and green, so he heads off in that direction. He isn’t sure what he’s standing on. The mist swirls around his feet and every step lands on some material with only slight resistance. Like walking in sand, only easier, and his legs do not tire even after he’s walked and walked for a long time. He does not sweat though there’s an awful clamminess in the air, something cold and sticky.

It takes a while before he realizes he’s not breathing. More precisely, there’s no need to breathe. He presses down on his chest in a curious motion, but even after he counts to ten there’s no answering beat of his heart.

So this really is a dream, he thinks, walking toward the spots of light that grow larger. Closer now he can see more spots of light, circles of red and orange and green scattered. The mist starts to clear, though there’s still a bit of it that curls around his feet, almost as though it is reluctant to let him go. Then he steps through the mist and stops, staring around, eyes widening despite himself.

Past the mist, aglow with a mysterious light though the sky and the surrounding is pitch black, hundreds of traffic lights litter the landscape. Some of them are bent at awkward angles, some have only the blinking orange light in the middle. A large one looms to his left, almost as though it were bending over him, and there are smaller ones crammed in the crack on the road. He blinks, and when he’s looking again, all of them have turned red. He lifts his left leg – he _attempts_ to lift his left leg – but it’s rooted to the strange ground. It’s only when all the lights turn green that he stumbles forward, walking on the path which winds through the hundreds of traffic lights.

If this is what dreams are like, then he’s better off not dreaming at all, he thinks, grumbling a little to himself.

“Wait,” he says, before he realizes the word did not come out as sound. Only his lips and tongue form the word, but no matter how he tries or curses no sound emerges from his mouth. And only then does he realize there’s a heavy silence to this place – the type of silence he associates with libraries deep underground, where the sound of a crinkling paper is as loud as thunder.

In the distance a broken traffic light flickers between red and orange, and at some point all the traffic lights go out of sync. When he turns to his left the green light shines, and to his right a smaller red and orange warn him to stop. He grits his teeth and keep walking forward, one determined foot after another, forced to stop only when all the lights turn red, even the broken, bent ones. Whatever this dream means, he thinks he doesn’t want to know. When the lights start going off on their respective rhythms again he continues walking, wondering and half-dreading what he’ll see at the end.

He scowls. He’s not a man so easily afraid of something as irrational as a dream. Even so, there’re limits to the curveballs he’s willing to accept, and he has to start wondering about the benefits of turning and walking the other way when he sees a figure approaching from the other end. It is his dream, right? And he’s in control of it. The figure, tottering and wavering on unsteady feet, is not a good sign. But for whatever reason his legs refuse to obey him, and the lights turn red. They stay red as the figure sways and approaches him, a strange, short thing with long curly hair, not close enough for him to see its features yet.

He doesn’t like what he _can_ see though. The hands ending in a doll’s rounded limb, no fingers to speak of, and something that looks suspiciously like stuffing trailing out of it. Its legs are made of the same material as its hands, as the rest of its body must be, though it’s covered with a worn red dress, with laces that need stitching and fraying ribbons. When it’s close enough and it lifts his face, he flinches back, unable to stop the silent shout of horror. The figure has one button eye missing, and from the other there’s a trail of red down its cheek, its black thread mouth fixed in an eternal smile.

The figure – the _doll_ – opens its mouth, revealing a cavernous black space, and says, the first sound Levi has heard from the beginning of the dream, “ _Wel…come…back…_ ”

It sounds like a pleased child. Sweet and high, the edge of laughter in its words.

Levi swallows as the doll comes closer to him. “I’m not what you’re looking for,” he says, and curses internally when he cannot hear his voice once more. The doll seems to understand though, and still with that smile it tilts its head to the side and says, in a curious, child-like way, “ _Mas…ter?_ ”

“I’m not your Master,” he says in the same soundless manner.

The doll’s expression doesn’t change as it stares at him for a while, finger-less hands curling around the hem of its dress. But while its expression never changes Levi shivers – the lights blink furiously around him, going from greens to oranges to reds so quickly they became a daze of colours, and when he forces his attention back on the doll its mouth opens in a shrill scream and it leaps for him.

Levi stumbles back on trembling legs and he falls on the soft ground, squeezing his eyes shut, bracing himself for a tumultuous return to his world. Or for him to be ripped apart, swallowed by the doll, whatever horrible means this dream has for him. But the doll never manages to touch him. There is a hiss, a sound not unlike wind, and a sickening lurch from under him as _something_ happens to the doll. The cold, clammy air has given way to something less heavy, something that makes him feel like it’s safe even if he decides to breathe in.

When he opens his eyes a boy stands in front of him, twin blades in hand, and there is only the same white mist he has walked through. The traffic lights and the path are nowhere to be seen. The mist curls around his wrists and ankles, quiet and calm like nothing had happened. If Levi could feel his heartbeat he knows it’d be racing.

The boy turns to him and for a while they lock gazes. A boy with eyes the colour of autumn grass, who looks no more than fifteen. His voice is soft and firm when he asks, “Who are you?”

“That’s my question,” Levi says, startled when he realizes he can hear his own voice, shaky from the encounter and unsure in a way he has never felt for a long time. He clears his throat and says, calmer this time, “Isn’t this my dream, in any case?”

The boy looks at him, not doing anything to help as Levi pulls himself to stand up. Dressed in a simple brown shirt, green jacket, and white pants, he is every bit a normal boy, yet not anybody Levi has ever met before. Is it even possible to dream of people he has never met before, Levi wonders. The boy’s eyes flicker, still unreadable, and he says, “This is not your dream.”

Levi scowls and crosses his arms, wanting to wake up and put this all behind him. Get the dream crystal and destroy it, forget that any of this had happened. Which sort of idiot would dream about somebody telling them it’s not their dream? “Yeah, and I suppose this is your dream, then? A collective hallucination for both of us?” he says with a scoff.

The boy doesn’t even blink when he says, slowly, “This is not my dream either.”

Things are getting ridiculous. Maybe the traffic lights and the doll had been a better deal. “Then whose shitty dream is this, huh?”

“No one’s,” the boy says, and this time he seems a little sad. “You’re not supposed to be here.”

“It’s not like I want to be here,” he says.

The boy nods, flicking his wrist. With that motion the twin blades disappear, with no steam or sound or anything to even prove that they had existed. The boy looks at him again with the same unflinching gaze and says, “What’s your name?”

“What?”

“Do you have a name?” the boy clarifies.

“What sort of a question is that? And isn’t it rude to ask for someone’s name without offering your own?” Levi says.

The boy frowns and looks at the ground. The mist curls around Levi’s feet, but around the boy’s boots it’s as though there’s a barrier and the mist hovers at the edges, never touching him. “I used to have a name. But not anymore, I think. Not here, at least,” he finally says.

“That’s stupid,” Levi says, scowl deepening. “Are you not human or something?”

“I’m a Dreamwalker,” the boy says.

Okay, so maybe Levi actually hit the nail this time, or this dream is just getting weirder and weirder. “So you’re not human,” he concludes, whatever the fuck a Dreamwalker is.

The boy doesn’t nod or shake his head. He just looks at Levi and says, “What’s your name?”

Levi sighs, ponders the risk of giving his name to a not-human-stranger-Dreamwalker thing, and decides this is all not real anyway. “Levi,” he says.

“Levi,” the boy says with a small sigh. If Levi were to say how he sounds he would say there’s a hint of nostalgia in the boy’s voice, a certain longing, but that’s just stupid because there’s no way he has ever met this boy before. “Levi, it’s dangerous for you to be here.”

“Considering a doll just tried to maybe rip me apart, I think I figured that out,” he says. “But it’s just a stupid dream, isn’t it?”

“It’s not a dream. It’s the remains of one,” the boy corrects. “The things that people have forgotten and have taken a life of their own.”

This boy seems determined to mess Levi’s mind up. “So that was somebody else’s screwed up imagination?”

“Yes. You’re not supposed to be able to see it,” the boy says, clear gaze on him. It makes Levi shiver. Then the boy frowns, his gaze going unfocused – the air around them gets heavier, the same cold, clammy feeling coming back. Before Levi can say anything else, the boy steps close to him and holds a hand over his eyes. He had expected to feel nothing, or perhaps an ice cold touch, but the boy’s hand is warm like any other human’s.

“Go,” the boy whispers, and Levi’s eyes close.

When he next opens his eyes, a heartbeat later the alarm clock rings, and he is awake in his own apartment. The area next to his pillow is as clear as it had been when he had gone to sleep.

There is no dream crystal. 


	2. The Beginning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The day after Levi dreams for the first time in his life is a wonderfully _normal_ one, so normal that everything he saw the night before is beginning to seem more like a hallucination induced by spiked food. 
> 
> He wonders why the universe wants to prove him wrong.

The Beginning

Levi leads a very simple life, as anyone would be able to tell. In the mornings he wakes up at six and slams his hand on the alarm clock two seconds later. This doesn’t change even during the weekends. He washes up, scowls at the mirror as though it had personally done him a disservice, and dresses before going for an hour-long workout. When he comes back and takes a shower his mood tips over from murderous to annoyed. After a breakfast consisting of whatever is in the fridge and what he can be bothered to cook, he checks the news, dresses for work, and is in the office by nine.

Hanji could cry from how boring his morning routine is. Though according to Levi, she belongs to the species of people who sleep until five minutes before nine and somehow manage to get dressed for work on time, so he ignores her. Erwin, used to Levi’s perpetual state of annoyed-with-the-whole-world, greets him with a cup of coffee and a stack of dreams to work on. It is the usual list of dreams that need fixing or tweaking, special requests, and below it a list of new ideas, courtesy of the invention team, that Levi can choose to work on after he has done the repair work.

“Good morning to you too,” Erwin says, when Levi grunts at him and grabs the papers.

Then it’s time for work before his team comes in at ten, and then it’s him foisting the tedious bits of work on them while he tries to figure out Hanji’s handwriting. It used to be worse. Now, with Moblit and Keiji on her team, he can at least infer from their notes what Hanji has scribbled on and on about. His job is a straightforward one – from all their customer feedback, they tweak dreams to satisfy what people want to see and provide as many versions of a basic dream as possible.

The cute and happy dreams, especially popular with parents seeking dreams for their children, Levi leaves to Gunter to take care of – they’ve long figured out that Gunter’s incredibly soft heart is best for that job. Petra tends to go after the romantic ones and, on the other side of the spectrum, the dreams heavy with action and battle. Auruo likes to mock her choices; in return Petra has developed a sharp tongue for the way he handles the adventure and fantasy sequences. If there’s one thing they form a truce on though, it’s directing all the dreams with adult, nighttime fantasies to Erd. Despite Erd’s sunny disposition he has a wicked sense of humour and a stomach that must be made of steel. Nothing else can explain his nonchalance as he switches off safe search and finds the most appropriate images to re-create in those dreams. Nobody can understand his ability to work on the dreams worthy of becoming horror movies. It thus makes sense that the horror dreams complete with mutilated bodies and malicious spirits that have empty eye sockets automatically go for him, the man capable of satisfying customer demands to be scared out of their skins in their dreams. Seeing these projects, Levi decides there are some aspects of humanity that he would rather not encounter in his lifetime.

They work well together though. Levi is able to ignore the insults flying from Petra’s desk to Auruo’s, Gunter refills his coffee just when he needs it, and when his frown deepens Erd wanders over to chat and to help decipher Hanji’s handwriting. All in all, there could be worse teams to work with.

By lunchtime they would have finished fixing all the dreams that need fixing, and on a good day they would also have a batch of new dreams for review. Auruo drops those off at Erwin’s office before they go out for lunch. The way the system works in _Escape_ , Hanji and her invention team come up with new ideas, do market research, and send those selected ideas to Levi and his creation team. When the dreams are created, they send the prototype to Erwin and his team, who review the dream, suggest changes, and decide on the number that will go out into the market. After lunch they work on the changes before sending them to the reproduction factory, and Mike and his team take charge of the marketing and promotion. Then they collect feedback and the whole cycle of creation and review starts again. All in all, it is a simple enough job, with a shit ton of profit for the company since people scramble over themselves to purchase their ideal dreams or nighttime fantasies.

By six Levi grabs his jacket and is out of the office while his team stays for another hour to finish up their individual assignments. Before he had met Mike, dinner tended to be whatever was on sale, or something out of the refrigerator.

“You’ll die early,” Mike had once said when he had visited, nose wrinkling in disapproval when he saw what Levi had in his fridge. Mike is the combination of perpetual mother hen and stoic friend who silently judges you, and he expresses this by cooking enough food for a week, coming over without an invite, raising an eyebrow in judgment when he sees Levi’s empty fridge, and pushing boxes of re-heatable food into Levi’s fridge.

Levi expresses his gratitude by paying for the groceries and not snarking at Mike. He even makes tea when the man comes over. It tends to turn into them spending a quiet Sunday watching television, reading books, and occasionally talking when they want to ask each other something. Then Mike leaves to deliver another batch of food to Hanji, who would forget to eat unless Moblit pleads with her or Mike puts a plate of food on top of her research notes.

So dinner now becomes one of Mike’s home-cooked meals, which doesn’t taste bad even after re-heating. Then Levi cleans his house (which he has down to an art), showers, sits in bed with a book, and is asleep by ten. After eight hours without dreaming he wakes and repeats the cycle all over again.

As Hanji had repeatedly moaned, his life is so boring she could cry.

Levi kicks her in the shins, though he doesn’t disagree. He could easily buy a crystal to experience some “nighttime excitement”, as Hanji likes to put it (complete with a leer). But he has never seen a need to and, besides that, he doesn’t see a point in tiring himself with a dream when he has to deal with at least twenty varied dreams everyday during work. Hanji tells him it isn’t the same. Levi flips her off, folds one of her notes into a paper aeroplane, and sends her chasing after it.

Everybody knows his life is boring. He knows it. He expects it to be so. So the morning he wakes after seeing the Dreamwalker boy, the first thing he thinks is, very eloquently, _fucking hell_.

He supposes nobody can blame him for lying there in shock for a while. Perhaps he isn’t the only one to have remembered a full dream and not have any crystal – if there are precedents they must be doing a damn good job of hiding. Levi decides he’ll have to root them out and threaten them into assuring him he’s not the only one. Course of action thus decided, he manages to make his way out of bed to wash up and dress, setting off for his morning work-out only two minutes behind schedule. The eggs he cooks are half-burnt, therefore edible, and he cuts down on the time he takes to check the news. Arriving at work Erwin hands him his cup of coffee and his dreams for the day.

He nods. Life is still normal. The presence of one dream and whatever the fuck a Dreamwalker is cannot disturb his rhythm. When he works on a crystal with rows upon rows of dolls in a toy-shop, for a moment all the dolls have empty sockets, thin mouth opens to reveal a cavernous space – he takes a deep breath, closes his eyes, and when he opens them again the dolls have baby-blue eyes and little pink lips.

He carries on with his work.

The day proceeds as every day does, to his immense relief. When Petra shouts over her desk that Auruo is a pig-headed fool who can never understand the sensitivity that romance requires, Levi even manages to smile at how _normal_ everything is. He hides it behind his cup of coffee; no need to let them think he has become a softie. He allows Hanji to badger him with a dream crystal – “Completely on me, a gift from me to you!” she says with a proud smile – before he gets irritated and chucks the crystal out of the window, making her wail and dash down to rescue the expensive crystal.

By the time it hits six, Levi is convinced what he dreamt about was not really a dream at all. It was likely more along the lines of a hallucination. Perhaps Mike had slipped something into his food to help him relax and it had caused the hallucination of a boy who called himself a Dreamwalker and who saved him from a creepy-ass doll. He swerves away from his usual path home to buy takeout, determined not to let Mike’s food trick him again. A bit of a waste, really, to not eat that night’s dinner, but he needs to be sure.

He chokes down the oily food and washes it all down with water. He tries not to think of falling asleep and realizes it is all he can think of while reading his book.

“Damn it,” he mutters, glaring at the book before slamming it shut.

He is _not_ going to dream of that stupid boy again, no matter what. He nods and brushes his teeth ferociously, then climbs into bed and squeezes his eyes tightly shut, waiting for the hours of soothing darkness to claim him.

The next thing he is aware of, he is surrounded by white mist.

“Fuck,” Levi says, drawing out the sound, and cursing in his head when he realizes that he cannot hear his own voice. He resists the urge to stamp his feet.

_This needs to stop_ , Levi thinks, even though this is only the second time it has occurred. He looks around the misty white plain and scowls when he sees that there isn’t anything he should be heading towards this time. No plain of broken traffic lights or dolls that rip apart people. In fact, the air is infuriatingly calm today.

He waits for a while, refusing to move and trying to make himself believe that the longer he stays still, the quicker it is he will slip into the dreamless darkness he has become so used to for as long as he has lived. He does not even care that he cannot produce dream crystals anymore. And even if he could produce a dream crystal from this dream, no sane person would wish to buy it, meaning all he can do is trade the crystal in for a pitiful amount of Imagination Energy.

There is no sense of time in the place. He isn’t sure if it is fifteen minutes or an hour that has passed since he entered this misty plain. The mist swirls around his feet calmly, offering no answer.

“Damn it,” he says soundlessly, and then he begins to walk.

The plain is never-ending. There is no sense of the horizon leading to anything but a further horizon. Not unlike the sea, Levi muses, except at some point the sea leads to land. Here, with pitch black darkness enveloping him like a snow globe and the mist spreading as far as he can see, Levi wonders how much longer he can walk before he goes crazy from sheer boredom.

And just as he thinks this, the boy materializes in front of him without a sound, the same clear gaze fixed on him.

“Shit!” Levi shouts, stumbling back, and then he realizes he was able to hear his own shout. If he was able to feel his heartbeat in this…place…dream…thing, it would have been beating erratically fast.

The boy tilts his head to the side and continues looking at him, unfazed.

Levi growls – taking some small comfort in the fact that he can hear himself again – then stands as straight as he can, glaring at the boy. The boy is annoyingly unperturbed. His yellow-green eyes study Levi like a cat’s eyes would, before he asks, “What are you doing here again?”

Levi sighs. Trust his only companion in a dream to be a blockheaded boy who speaks in riddles. “It’s not like I want to be here. Can’t help what happens when I sleep,” he says.

The boy frowns at him, and before Levi is even aware of anything happening there is a blade at his neck. He flinches. The boy had moved fast, without any warning or hint that he’s going to draw a blade – that settles it, he’s not human.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Levi says, trying not to snarl.

The boy looks strangely disappointed when he lowers his blade. “So you’re not a Dreamwalker,” he says, as though he’s puzzled, “then why _are_ you here?”

“Are all you Dreamwalkers this dumb? I don’t know why I’m here, shithead,” Levi says, relieved that the blade has disappeared. He’s not sure what the rules are for getting hurt or killed in dreamscapes, and he does not want to know. “You can get me out of here like you did yesterday,” he suggests, wanting nothing more than to go back to a deep dreamless sleep.

“Yesterday?” the boy asks, looking blank.

Maybe all Dreamwalkers really are this dumb. “Yes, when there was that shitty doll that you got rid of.”

There seems to be some understanding in the boy’s eyes this time. “Oh. It’s been a day already?”

“What, there’s no concept of time in this space?” Levi asks, eyes narrowing.

“Sort of. And anyway, I shouldn’t do that again. It’s not good for you,” the boy explains with a small shrug. “Sorry.”

“So I’m stuck here?”

The boy nods.

“With you?”

The boy looks down for a bit as though pondering it, before he says, “I suppose so.”

“Damn it.”

The boy pouts, and if Levi weren’t certain Dreamwalkers are another species altogether he’d say the boy almost seems human in his expressions. “Hey, it’s not that bad. I guess…I guess you can follow me? I’ve never had a human dwell in this realm before.” He seems a little cheerful at the thought, though mostly worried.

“Aren’t dreamers human?” Levi says, falling into step beside the boy as they tread through the mist. It’s not very fair that the boy seems to glide while Levi is stuck with lifting one foot after another.

“But this is not the dreaming realm,” the boy says, glancing at Levi. “This is _Verloren_.”

_Ver_ -what? “Come again?”

“ _Ver-lo-ren_ ,” the boy says, enunciating the word carefully this time. “The realm of lost dreams.”

“Lost dreams?” Levi asks, slightly distracted by the fact that the mist seems to be fading as they walk. He is sick of the mist, but at the same time if something like the doll awaits them, he probably doesn’t want to step there.

“It’s easier if I show you,” the boy says, just before the white mist vanishes altogether and they’re on a beach.

“What the – ”

It is a beach. Albeit a beach that’s fuzzy at the end, almost as though somebody had forgotten to fill in part of a painting. There are palm trees swaying behind them, and in the sea there’s a girl swimming, dressed in a one-piece swimming suit, arching through the air like a dolphin before she dives back through the water. She swims all the way to the fuzzy edge before she appears from the other end.

“Somebody’s dream?” Levi says, starting to get used to this dreamscape. As far as dreams go it’s not so bad.

“Somebody’s lost dream,” the boy corrects, settling down on the beach. “Watch.”

There’s nothing very interesting about the dream. At some point the girl dives deep, and when she emerges from the water she’s in a full diving suit. Things like that happen in dreams, Levi knows, but it still feels like a surreal painting.

Then it begins to snow. The sun is shining, the sea is sparkling, and it’s snowing. Levi looks up at the sky, feels the snow melting on his skin with a curious sensation, not cold, but not warm either. The boy seems untouched by the snow – he just watches the girl swimming. The girl doesn’t seem affected by the snow either; then again, it’s not difficult to lose track of the fact that it’s snowing when she’s being chased by a shark and screaming. The screams are strangely muffled, and she’s swimming a lot slower than she used to be – the shark nearly snaps its jaw at her ankle when the scene seems to stop and blur for a moment.

When the scene is sharp again, there’s no snow, and all he sees is a girl swimming through the water and arching through the air like a dolphin, her one-piece swimming suit glimmering with the water.

He only needs to watch the girl dive, the snow fall, and the shark chasing her once more before he says, “It just keeps looping?”

“Yes,” the boy says, looking bored. “It’s what happens when a dreamer wakes up but cannot remember parts of the dream. What the dreamer forgets comes to _Verloren_ , and the dream keeps repeating itself in this space.” He stands up and dusts his pants on habit, though no sand has stuck to him. “This is just one piece of many. This one’s not so bad though.”

Levi’s not sure he can say the same for the girl, but he’s not sure if the girl even has a consciousness. The boy walks away from the beach toward the fuzzy edge and Levi walks with him, ignoring the muffled scream of the girl. Just before they walk through the edge it stops snowing and the girl is swimming again, arching through the air, an impossibly long and elegant movement that is stuck in time. Then they are back in the white plains, the boy gliding through the mist and Levi walking.

“So what do you do? Besides walk through these dreams,” Levi asks. He tells himself it’s natural curiosity. The sickening sensation building up in his stomach, the feeling that something is very wrong about this place – they tell him otherwise.

“I get rid of dreams that get out of hand,” he says, the blade materializing in his hand again. In the real world it looks sharp enough to cleanly slice a man’s head off. “Sometimes the remains of a dream becomes…sort of crazy, I guess, and it tries to invade other remnants, or change the dream. When that happens I get rid of the dream.”

“And it’s no more?” Levi says, watching the boy twirl the blade.

“No more,” the boy agrees. “Sometimes the dreamer remembers parts of the dream, and sometimes all of it, and it goes back to them. But most of the time they stay here. Forgotten.”

The white mist clears again, and this time they are standing on a battlefield, uneven rock and mud beneath their feet. There’re explosions in the sky and the boy walks through calmly, looking around before he finds what he wants. He points to a space in front of a crumbling building. “See that?”

“That” turns out to be a pure white space, unnatural in the way it does not fit in with the rest of the landscape. It’s the white mist, beyond it the splatter of blood and people holding guns, shooting at the white space before they run away, yelling. After a bomb is dropped the whole dream stops for a moment, blurs, and then the people have disappeared and there is an unnatural silence.

“The white part. That’s what the dreamer remembered after a while and took with them. But they do not remember the rest,” the boy explains. He waves a hand and they’re back in the plains. “That’s why you should not be here. No dreamer enters _Verloren_.”

“Yet here I am,” Levi says, crossing his arms.

“Here you are,” the boy says, holding Levi’s gaze and smiling. There’s something about the smile that makes Levi feel like the boy is asking for his help, though for help in what, he cannot begin to guess at.

“You – ” he shakes his head – “aren’t there other Dreamwalkers?”

“There are,” the boy says, his voice hard, “and I’m looking for them. You should not come back here, Levi.”

“And I’ve told you, I can’t bloody control this shit,” Levi says, trying to rein in his temper.

The boy frowns, eyes narrowing, before he mutters something. Something that doesn’t sound too nice.

“What was that, you little piece of shit?” Levi growls. Dreamwalker or not he really wants to pummel this boy to the ground.

The boy says, a spark of mirth in his voice, “I said, of all the people I can be stuck with, why does it have to be an old geezer like you?” He grins and sticks his tongue out at Levi.

Oh, that does it. He gives himself a second to be surprised at how much the boy can act like, well, a normal boy, before he steps forward prepared to catch the boy in a good headlock.

Of course, with his luck, the air around him wavers and he blinks. When he snaps open his eyes the alarm clock is ringing loud enough to wake his neighbours.

“Fuck that little piece of shit,” Levi growls. The next time he sees him, he won’t hesitate to make the boy learn some fucking respect. He sits up and slams the clock so hard he wouldn’t be surprised if it broke. On instinct, he glances at the space beside his pillow.

Once again, there is no dream crystal, and he is beginning to wonder if he should be relieved or worried at the fact.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not quite back in fandom, but for some reason I had the inspiration for another chapter of this. I missed writing SnK fics. 
> 
> A comment is always appreciated :)

**Author's Note:**

> This is a new concept for me and it would help me to know what you think. I would greatly appreciate your comments :)


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